How to Use HubPages to Intelligently Promote your New Small Business Website

..And someone told you HubPages was a good place to get a link for "small business SEO"?

Well, that's definitely true if you are prepared to put the work in, but if all you want to do is put up one article linking to your site and move on to the next site to get another link, then:

• a) it won't work
• b) you will be wasting your time and effort
• c) you will be wasting the huge potential of HubPages to help your business and your website.

As with everything in life, you get out what you put in, and hubpages is no different. In this article we are going to explain how to go about building one killer link to your website, but you must understand that you won't get it for a few weeks, and it will require a bit more work.

It will however ultimately be well worth your efforts.

Before we look at the strategy for HubPages it is important to understand a little about how Google views the web, and they way they handle links in general, so you can understand how to use HubPages in the most effective manner to help your business initially, and ultimately your website's rankings.

As I am sure you are aware Google has it's own link matrix from the World Wide Web, with which it calculates a website's popularity, and in general, the more links coming to a site the better. A site which is heavily linked to can be considered a "Google hub"

However Google have taken this one step further and apply multiple quality scores to links, to either weight (or ignore) them, they are basically deciding how important each link is, on a link-by-link basis.

By the virtue of the fact that a "Hub site" has many links pointed to it, it's therefore logical that a link from a Hub site will be more valuable than a link from a new site, or a site with few inbound links to it? - still with us so far? 

HubPages.com are well aware of the fact that lots of new users sign up thinking they can get a quick link and then off to the next site, never to return, and have implemented a system into their site to ensure that anyone doing that gets any SEO benefit from the links they leave because they are "nofollow" until you reach a certain Hub Author Score.

Do NOT be deterred, think of the incubation time to get your link live as an opportunity, to build the strongest link you possibly can to your site, all the while leveraging the power of Hubpages.com's authority status to drive traffic to your new site (that currently isn't going to see very much traffic from search engines, as it has no links, remember?) and then ultimately end up with a really good link.

"How do I do that?"

So now this is how to go about it:

• Write a very high quality hub of 1000 words or more, paying attention to all the details. Your first Hub is to be your "inner" Hub, the one with the link out to your business website.
• Write the hub as an overview of your whole site, but without being promotional at all, make it a factual explanation / overview of your business and your website, leaving out your company name.
  
• Link to your site ONCE, using your anchor text.
  
• Leave the setting on Hubpages that says: "this hub may be considered commercial"
• Over the course of the next 2 weeks now write another 7 "Outer" Hubs, they can be smaller but still aim at 5-700 words, going into more details of individual and specific elements of your business. Do not repeat yourself from the first Hub.
  
• The quality of the outer hubs still needs to be high (and unique) but if you are truly passionate about your business it should be easy to expound on individual aspects of why your service is better, what a customer should and shouldn't be looking for, but again, without mentioning your company name.
  
• On the 2nd Hub change the setting to "cannot be considered commercial".
  
• DO NOT LINK from the 2nd Hub to your business website, or to any other external website instead link once from there to your 1st main hub using suitable anchor text, and to at least 2 other relevant HubPages written by others.
• On the 3rd Hub select "commercial" again but do not link to your business site. You are free (and advised by HubPages) to link out to other authoritative websites, and of course to your first hub again.
  
• From the 4th Hub onwards now alternate between commercial and non-commercial sticking to this same strategy and linking to the other outer hubs where appropriate, until your Personal Hubscore goes over 75 and your main link goes live.
• After you complete and publish every Hub, go and find a minimum of one other Hub you like, and comment on it.
• Then find another one you like, and vote it up.
• Blog externally about your 2nd -8th mini-hubs, and link to them from elsewhere along the way !! -if you have a blog within your new business site link to one or two of them from there. Otherwise open up a free blog account and make mini-posts (200words+) linking to your outer hubs from there and anywhere else you can.
  

Lets look at what we've done.

First we put up one good overview of your business with a highly relevant link to your site in it. Hubpages is a powerful authority site and Google will have very likely found and indexed your first Hub very quickly. In non-competitive keyword search terms, your hub will quite likely now be ranking for your target keywords.

However the link is "nofollow" at present and in any case even if it were not, it comes from a brand new page which itself has no relevant or trusted links from anywhere else, so its value currently to your site at this point would be slight.

Then we have built a further cluster of high-quality related articles interlinked with themselves and to your main HubPage, in effect a little mini Link Wheel, but all within one site.

This is how Wikipedia is so dominant in Search engines, by use of intelligent contextual interlinking between their relevant pages.

What has not been mentioned up until this point is that from publication of your very first Hub, assuming it is high quality and marks you as an expert in your business (which we all strive to be, don't we?) HubPages will actually be driving traffic to your site, because far more people will see your Hub within Hubpages than will see your business website in Google at this point, and if they like what you have written some will undoubtedly click through to find out more.

So lets re-cap, we have taken our time, and built a truly useful and original interlinked knowledge base within Hubpages on your subject. This whole time HubPages will have been driving traffic to your site that you would not otherwise get.

In the meantime Google has been indexing and caching your Hubs, and their highly interlinked integration into HubPages, both by your Hubs, and your comments will have actually made these into a very useful place to get a link in Google's eyes now, these Hubs will rank in Google for their main terms, and the big main one should be linked to by every other of your Hubs and so is getting to have some actual "Hub status" in Google now.

And Suddenly you Hit the Magic 75...

And the nofollow will come off your link, Bingo! you now have a high quality live link from a genuine Google Hub to your business website, plus ever increasing referrals to it from Hubpages the whole time.

This is a Win-Win Strategy for both you and for Hubpages, they get genuine quality unique content, you stay within the Hubpage rules and actually contribute to their site, however at the same time captive audience and inbuilt traffic, not to mention genuine Google Hub Site status will provide you with a monster link to your site, given a little time and effort.

So hopefully you can use this strategy to actually benefit your own business website and business, whilst at the same time building quality hubs to keep Hubpages happy and maybe even earn you some money here for your efforts, wouldn't that be nice? :)

Any questions please do ask in the comments and we will be glad to go into more depth about the whats and whys..

Happy hubbing...